Family Business
by Bottle Red Rosie
Summary: "The world ended because I killed my father instead of my brother." What would have happened if Niko had grown up in his father's custody? Alternate Universe take on Nightlife. Niko POV. Spoilers through Nightlife and also throughout the series. AU character death. Warnings for Cal (and everyone else) swearing (a lot).


**Rating:** T  
 **Words:** 15,500  
 **Spoilers:** Spoilers for everything, but Nightlife in particular.  
 **Warnings:** Language, non-graphic adult situations, AU character death.  
 **Summary:** "The world ended because I killed my father instead of my brother."  
 **Disclaimer:** Everything is owned by someone else.  
 **A/N:** AU take on Nightlife supposing Niko had been raised by his father instead of his mother. Niko POV. Some dialogue borrowed from Nightlife by Rob Thurman reproduced without any permission whatsoever (but hopefully she wouldn't mind!)

 **FAMILY BUSINESS**

" _You could've helped him. You could've_ saved _him." He could've saved him from our mother._

 _Saved_ _him_ _from_ _me_.

— Cal Leandros

" _Had I taken you with me I wonder if you would be who you are today... I can guess that you are the better for not being raised in my image, but I_ know _he is the better for being raised by you."_

— Emilian Kalakos

The world ended because I killed my father instead of my brother.

Wait.

Let me back up a second.

* * *

My name is Niko Kalakos. Sounds kinda Greek, right? Well I'm actually Rom. Vayash clan to be precise. My father is Emilian Kalakos, and at some point in our family history, some dim distant Rom ancestor of ours got knocked up by a Greek guy. Or one of our Rom ancestors knocked up a Greek girl. Which explains why I can have blond hair and not get kicked out of the Vayash clan on my ass for being _gadje_ —or a filthy outsider.

My father maintains we're descended from Achilles himself, but he's full of bullshit so I don't believe a single thing that comes out of his mouth most of the time.

Yeah, so me and my dad don't get along so well.

As well as being completely full of bullshit, he's also an abusive asshole.

I came to live with him when I was two years old. My mother—another abusive asshole by the name of Sophia Leandros—decided she couldn't stand the sight of me any longer. Think I was putting off the long line of "gentleman callers" waiting outside her trailer door. After she beat the crap out of me one day, some interfering busybody called the cops and somehow I ended up dumped on my father's doorstep.

Not that he actually _had_ a doorstep. He kind of moved around a lot.

He called himself a "problem solver." Basically he travelled around doing the Vayash's dirtiest of dirty work for them—murder, rape, pillage—all the favorites of your basic psychopath.

For some reason, someone thought it would be a good idea to give him sole custody of a two-year-old kid.

If he taught me anything, it was that the only thing that mattered in the world was survival. Namely, _my_ survival.

Which brings me back to the End of the World.

When I was fifteen, my ever-loving father decided he'd had enough of me too. Whether he felt like he'd taught me all he could—and we're not just talking murder, rape and pillage here, he was actually pretty good with a sword and an expert at all kinds of martial arts—or whether I was just cramping his style, I don't know. Could have been that time his girlfriend got me drunk and propositioned me, and he came home to find her on top of me with her tongue stuck down my throat. I guess that could have had something to do with it.

So I was fourteen and she was forty. Big deal.

Anyway, the day after my fifteenth birthday I woke up to find my dad gone. He'd taken everything, including most of my stuff, and I didn't have that much stuff to begin with. Figured he'd roofied me the night before when he was toasting my birthday and plied me with pretty much a whole bottle of ouzo. I was a light sleeper. If he hadn't drugged me, I would have heard him as he was light on his feet but not _that_ light.

So there I was, fifteen years old, in a motel room in the middle of nowhere; no home to speak of; ditched by my dad; ditched by my mom; no money; no transport; and no idea what to do next.

I figured I had four options. Firstly, I could track down my dad and demand to know why he'd ditched me. Which, considering he was an abusive asshole, which I may have mentioned earlier, was not my first choice.

Secondly, I could track down the Vayash. We'd never really had much to do with them when I was a kid, other than the odd visit for my dad to pick up his next assignment, but they hadn't disowned me or anything, even though Emilian never saw fit to teach me how to speak Rom. I think he was worried someday I might turn out to be too much in the way of competition in the mercenary game, so he did his best to keep me as _g_ _adje_ as possible.

The Vayash were also not particularly high on my list of desired options, although if I could have talked them into putting a roof over my head, I would have at least had a chance to finish school. Not that school had been particularly high on Emilian's list of priorities, but I wasn't an idiot and I liked to learn, even though my father thought it was more important I knew how to kill a man with a can opener than I knew how to read or write.

Third option was tracking down Sophia. This was another less than appealing possibility. I didn't know anything of my mother, other than she was an abusive asshole, but every time we visited the Vayash or any of the other Rom clans, the adults would look at me with nothing short of disgust on their faces, which my father told me was all down to my mother being a whore.

Which, you know, just my luck.

My final option was telling them all to go screw themselves, I was more than old enough to look after myself, thanks very much.

This, I had to admit, was my preferred option, but at fifteen with no home, no transport, no parents and not a dime to my name, I wasn't entirely sure how to go about achieving this.

Eventually, I settled on a combination of several of the above options.

Firstly, I let some guy in the bus station bathroom put his hand down the front of my pants for the price of a bus ticket to New Jersey, which was the last place I'd had any contact with the Vayash.

When I got to Newark, I nosed around a while, eventually discovering they'd moved on to a town just outside of Boston.

Another fumble in the men's room got me another bus ticket, and eventually I was welcomed into the bosom of my Rom clan.

Well, they didn't chase me away with pitchforks anyway.

At least they fed me and let me stay the night.

They'd not seen Emilian in a while, and when I asked about Sophia, all I got was horrified glances and a couple of the older women spitting on me.

Which, y'know. Gypsies.

Eventually some of the kids my age told me there was a rumor my dear old mom had whored herself out to monsters for gold, and had eventually given birth to one of their own.

This, of course, was ridiculous.

Still, whatever "whored herself out to monsters" was a euphemism for, finding Sophia had suddenly dropped right to the bottom of my to-do list.

I was pretty fed up of the old crones giving me the evil eye and was definitely fed up of all the spitting by this time, so option four suddenly looked like the preferred way forward.

Wasting money on travel seemed stupid at that point, so I stuck around Boston for a while, even after the Vayash moved on. I got a job at a gas station, and another cleaning up in the local dojo. I might have been fifteen, but I could easy pass for seventeen, so nobody questioned me, or why I was living by myself in a trailer park with no parental supervision.

I'd pretty much grown up in trailer parks, so it wasn't exactly a hardship. I was fifteen; I had my own place, two jobs, and a little bit of money, and by my sixteenth birthday I'd enrolled in night classes to get my GED.

Things were going pretty good.

I didn't see college in my future or anything, but I was getting by.

By the time I hit eighteen, I was teaching in the dojo, and the sensei told me I was the most promising student he'd ever had.

That's when I bumped into my father again.

I don't know how he found me. I didn't think he was looking for me, specifically. It was just one of those random things. I had an evening job in a bar by that point, and in he came, sat down in front of me, asked for a Jack Daniels, then finally looked at me when I didn't get him his drink.

He laughed.

I didn't.

We didn't exactly catch up.

He told me my mother was dead.

Burned to death in her trailer.

And then he left.

After he finished his drink.

 _Asshole._

* * *

I was nineteen the first time I killed someone.

I was twenty the first time I killed someone for money.

That first time, I'm still not sure what happened.

Some guy jumped me as I was leaving work one night. Told me I had to die to save the world.

Save the world.

Seriously.

Like I was _that_ important.

And as weird as that was, it got a whole lot weirder after I knifed him with his own blade.

Swear to God I saw wings.

Just for a second, in between his last two breaths, the guy had wings.

Weirdest goddamned thing I ever saw.

Kinda had to go on the run after that. Not just because the cops wanted to speak to me—I figured it was self-defense after all—but because after that? Every weirdo in the whole freakin' world seemed to want to kill me.

Not to mention the red eyes.

Every now and then, out of the corner of my eye, I'd see one. Something with red eyes following me.

It made me think about Sophia Leandros and the Rom's modern-day urban legend about her having whored herself out to monsters.

I was twenty when I bumped into Emilian again.

He offered me a job.

Said he'd been contracted to track down some guy who had information about the Vayash burden.

Although I wasn't entirely clear on the specifics, I gathered each Rom clan had a burden, a duty in which they absolutely could not fail, and although my father wouldn't tell me exactly what the Vayash burden was, he assured me this guy could help.

At that point, I was kinda down on my luck, so I thought, what the hell. Gather some intel with my old man. Might even get me back in with the Vayash again. Or at least stop them from spitting at me.

What the old man _didn't_ tell me was that once we'd gotten the guy's intel, Kalakos had been paid by the Vayash to kill him.

So once the old geezer had finished spilling his guts about some kid he had working for him in his bar in New York City, my dad decided to slit his throat.

Unfortunately, the old geezer was a hell of a lot more wily than we originally gave him credit for, shot my dad in the gut before he could even properly draw his knife, and it was left up to me to wrestle the gun off him before shooting him in the head with it.

My dad shared his fee.

After I agreed to get him to a hospital.

Hell, I would have let the bastard bleed to death all over Brooklyn, but ten grand was a lot of money.

* * *

I spent my twenty-first birthday in a whorehouse.

It wasn't what you're thinking, though. My dad was an asshole, remember?

He'd been tasked with getting more intel on this kid the old geezer had spilled his guts—and eventually his brains—over.

I didn't know who he was, or why the Vayash were so goddamn interested in him. I only knew my dad seemed determined to the point of obsession to get the skinny on him "for the good of the clan."

I already told you he was full of bullshit, right?

Anyway, Emilian found out the kid was best pals with some second-hand car salesman with a thing for blonds.

Any kind of blond.

Just my luck, right?

So what better way to get ahold of his intel for the Vayash than through old fashioned pillow talk, my dad said.

My argument, that dear old dad was also blond so why the hell wasn't _he_ the one hanging out at the whorehouse waiting for this Goodfellow guy to show up, fell on deaf ears.

The guy liked _pretty_ and blond, he said.

And Madame Brigitte apparently said my dad would look out of place in her establishment other than as a customer, whereas I'd make for better set decoration.

And besides, my dad was still recovering from almost being shot to death.

Again, just my freakin' luck.

So there I was, hanging around this godforsaken place full of pretty girls and even prettier boys with absolutely no hope for their future, selling themselves for a shot at something—anything—better than whatever it was they already had or didn't have, whilst all the time having to fend off big, sweaty guys with hairy backs and wandering hands and women old enough to be my grandmother, when finally— _finally_ —this Goodfellow guy shows up.

From his five hundred dollar shoes, I would have said the place was a little lowbrow for him, but the Madame told me he occasionally liked to go "blue collar."

Yeah, I'd not even spoken to him yet, and I could already tell he was an asshole too.

He strutted into the place like he owned it, which he quite possibly did, telling the Madame he was after female companionship that night.

Looking around at his various options, he took one look at me and instantly changed his mind.

"Where in Hades did _this_ one come from?" he demanded, pointing at me as if I was the designer suit that had saved him from having to buy from off the rack. He then proceeded to march right on up to me, shove me up against the wall and stick his tongue so far down my throat I was pretty sure he would have been able to tell what I had for breakfast. "And why wasn't I notified?" he added, pulling away a little breathlessly, one arm wrapped around my waist while his other hand grabbed at my ass.

He was staring at me like a lion stalking a particularly unfortunate impala, his hips grinding against me in such a way as to leave absolutely no doubt as to his intentions toward me.

And from the feel of it, those were some pretty damn sizeable intentions.

Now it wasn't like I didn't have any experience with guys. Hell, I'd been living on my own since I was fifteen, and sometimes there weren't many options for quick income generation open to a kid that age.

But this guy...

I had the distinct feeling I was in trouble, and not for the first time that day cursed my ever-loving father for deciding whoring me out was the best way to get the intel he was after.

Like mother like son, I guess he figured.

Of course, the problem with pillow talk was that before you got to the talking part you had to go through a lot of other stuff first. Like letting the guy with the biggest dick you'd ever seen in your entire life get within twenty feet of you with the thing.

I probably should have tried to run when he decided he was going to carry me— _carry_ me—upstairs to the bedrooms.

And I don't mean like your romantic, carry the bride over the threshold kind of carry.

No. More like a fireman's carry.

One second he had me pinned to the wall trying to grope me like his life depended on it, the next, he'd thrown me over his shoulder and was quite literally sprinting up the stairs with me, yelling at the Madame that he was booking me for the entire night and quite possibly the rest of my natural life.

Which, okay, kinda creepy, kinda flattering, but mostly just creepy.

By the time he got me into a room, he'd somehow already managed to get his shirt off before he even finished throwing me down onto the sizeable bed.

And then he just stood there looking at me for a second, before announcing, "I want to tie you up."

Now it wasn't the first time a guy had said that to me either, but previously I'd been thirteen and it had involved my breaking into some loser's house to steal back some priceless Rom bauble he somehow managed to buy off of eBay.

My dad gave me all the best jobs.

That time, Emilian had been sitting in the guy's study smoking one of his priceless cigars, completely oblivious to the peril I was in.

This time he'd promised me he'd have my back, that I wouldn't actually have to let the guy do anything to me. I was just bait. He said.

Of course, he forgot to mention that while I was acting as bait he'd be upstairs entertaining the Madame and a couple of her girls.

Yeah, class act, my dad. Just been shot and everything.

So here I was. Completely at the mercy of a total stranger who wanted to tie me up, had the world's biggest dick, and was currently looking at me like he couldn't decide which bit he wanted to put what into first.

"What's your name?" he asked me, before blurting out, "No, no, don't tell me. I'm going to call you Achilles, because you could easily be mistaken for a godlike Greek hero."

Which was absolutely freakin' hilarious considering my father's claim to Achilles' lineage.

"Okay," was all I managed to reply, lying on the bed trying to figure out the quickest escape route should the car salesman decide it was time to get his money's worth.

He didn't move though, just carried on gazing at me like a love-struck schoolboy.

"I really think you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he told me. "And believe me when I tell you I've seen a lot of beautiful things in my time."

"Uh," I mumbled. "Thanks?"

He quirked up one corner of his mouth and it occurred to me he was actually quite good-looking. If you were into that sort of thing.

"You know," he started to say, and suddenly from nowhere he was holding handcuffs in his hands. "I'm actually looking for a new chauffeur cum Boy Friday cum occasional—what's the phrase they use these days?—fuck buddy. How would you like me to take you away from all this?"

Somehow, I managed not to knee him in the balls when he suddenly threw himself on top of me, grabbed hold of both of my wrists in one ridiculously strong hand and started nuzzling my ear as he fumbled with the handcuffs, all the while seemingly trying to drill to China right through my hipbone.

"That's a tempting offer," I told him, finally managing get a word in while his mouth was busy with my neck. "But I hear you already have a boy toy."

He stopped what he was doing immediately, a look of intense guilt darkening his face.

"What did you hear?" he demanded, one hand going to my throat and tightening a little too convulsively around it for comfort. "If that blasted glorified pigeon has been going around telling people we're exclusive, I'll pluck every single one of his feathers and stuff my pillows with them!"

I blinked at him. "Huh?"

"Huh?" he returned, looking distinctly confused.

"Who are you talking about?"

"Who are _you_ talking about?"

Deciding this might be my best opportunity to take control of the situation, I managed to position one knee between his legs and get my hands underneath his shoulders, giving me the leverage I needed to flip him over onto his back and climb up on top of him before he could get the handcuffs on me.

Fortunately, he seemed more than pleased with this development, especially when I wrestled control of the handcuffs off of him and proceeded to chain _him_ to the bed with them instead.

His wandering and extremely strong hands now safely restrained, it was time to get that intel I was after without having to worry about defending my honor at the same time.

I was straddling his hips at this point, and figured I should at least make a show of it, starting to unfasten his belt. Slowly. Very, very slowly.

He actually looked like he might explode.

"Dear gods, I like you, my darling!" he burst out. "I like you a lot. What's your name?"

I frowned at him. "I thought you wanted to call me Achilles?"

He shrugged. "I can't put that on our wedding invitations!"

I actually laughed at that.

Sure, the guy had paid a shit ton of money to spend the night pounding me into the mattress, but maybe he wasn't quite the asshole I initially thought he was.

In another life, we might have been friends.

"Depends on your other boy toy," I said. "The one who worked in that bar where the owner got his brains blown out a while back."

He blinked at me. "Caliban?" he hazarded with a slightly confused frown.

"Is that his name or a disease?" I asked, realizing I'd gotten the car salesman's belt unfastened a little bit faster than I'd intended.

He snorted. "And that's why I love blonds so very much," he announced. "Caliban is his name. After the character in Shakespeare."

Figuring the guy actually preferred dumb blonds to someone who might have read The Tempest, I distracted him by licking from the waistband of his boxers up to his belly button, which elicited a groan and a frustrated thrust of his hips in my general direction.

"So what's the deal with you two?" I asked casually.

Goodfellow narrowed his eyes a little. "What's it to you?" he returned suspiciously.

I palmed at the, quite honestly, terrifyingly huge bulge in the front of his perfectly pressed casual slacks for a second, batting my eyelashes at him innocently. "Just sizing up the competition," I told him.

He brought his knee up between my thighs, and for a second I thought he was going to buck me right off of him.

But he didn't.

He obviously had me exactly where he wanted me.

"Cal is no competition," he told me, relaxing a little. "He's just a friend. A very, very, _very_ old friend."

"Oh?" I said. "I thought he was just a kid."

"He is," Goodfellow confirmed enigmatically. "Not a day over nineteen."

"Okay."

"And not that I wouldn't—what's the modern parlance? _—hit_ _that_ if the opportunity arose, but he's just not..."

"Blond enough?" I offered.

He snorted again. "I've never seen hair so jet black that didn't come out of a bottle," he said. "You know gypsies."

I froze. "He's a gypsy?"

"His mother is. Was."

My brain started to do things I really didn't want it to be doing just then.

 _Whored_ _herself_ _out_ _to_ _monsters_...

"And his father?

Goodfellow just looked at me for a second, all traces of lust and mirth gone from his features.

"The less said about that, the better," he told me.

I nodded. I wanted to ask...but...

"Gypsies," I said instead, forcing a laugh.

"He's a work in progress," Goodfellow continued with a sad little smile. "Got off to a bad start in life. Needs to be kept on the straight and narrow." He grinned big at me then. "I found him a new gig, just like I'm offering you."

I raised an eyebrow at him. "Yeah? Doing what?" I asked. "Occasional fuck buddy?"

He frowned at me. "My—uh—friend owns a bar called the Ninth Circle. Persuaded him to give Cal a job there after the unfortunate demise of his former employer."

This intel-gathering was kinda easy once you got the hang of it. It was almost as if Goodfellow _wanted_ me to find this Cal kid. "That was very community spirited of you," I commented, a twitch of Goodfellow's hips reminding me what I was supposed to be doing.

Once I unzipped his pants, his statuesque manhood managed to find its way out of them seemingly of its own accord.

And that was the closest I was getting to _that_ thing in this lifetime.

"Impressive, huh?" he said as I stared at it in disbelief.

"Uh," I stammered. "Pretty terrifying, actually."

"Don't be scared," he told me. "I know how to use it."

I swallowed. "I'll just bet you do," I said, finally tearing my gaze away from it and back up to his face, which was plastered with a lascivious grin. "So this Caliban guy," I continued, trying to hurry things along before we got to the point where I was going to have to do something I would definitely regret in the morning. "His last name made up by a dead English writer too?"

Goodfellow raised an eyebrow. "You seem very interested in him," he observed, before continuing, "His mother was Greek Rom. His last name's Leandros."

And that was pretty much when my brain stopped working altogether.

"Leandros?" I echoed, and I could feel the color draining from my face.

Goodfellow nodded. "He's not a bad kid. Not yet, anyway. But he has a temper. And he likes his guns just a little bit too much for my liking."

Sophia had another kid.

I had a brother.

I had a brother and my father never told me.

He must have known.

He _must_ have.

Is this why he came and found me? To help him find my brother? When he wandered into the bar I'd been working at, had that been something other than mere coincidence? And what did Kalakos want with this kid? What did the Vayash want with him?

And did our mother really whore herself out to monsters?

 _Vayash_ _burden_.

Jesus.

I needed to get to the kid—my brother. I needed to get to him before my father found him. Because if Caliban Leandros was the Vayash burden, then I had absolutely no doubt Kalakos had been sent to kill him.

I couldn't let that happen.

Not before I got to talk to him first.

"I have to go," I announced, pushing myself up off the car salesman, hopping off the bed and straightening my clothes.

"Wait, what?" he burst out in disbelief. "You have to go _where_? I paid for the _night_ , dammit!"

"Uh," I stammered. "Don't take it personally. I just have somewhere I need to be."

"You need to be writhing naked underneath _me_ , that's where you need to be!" Goodfellow burst out, shaking the cuffs in frustration.

I shrugged. "Sorry, man," I said, and I almost kinda meant it. "I'll send someone up to take care of you, okay?"

I guess I could have killed him, but I figured he was pretty harmless.

I think what followed was a tirade of Greek curse words, at which point I ran from the room, bumping into Madame Brigitte in the hallway.

She was in a state of semi-undress, wrapped only in a Japanese-style silk kimono.

"Anyone ever tell you your daddy's an asshole?" she asked, before grabbing hold of the front of my shirt and swinging me into the nearest wall, where once again I found my throat being violated by a less-than-welcome tongue. When she'd done, she pulled away from me and seemed to aim her next comment toward my jeans pocket. "Hear that, Kalakos, you son of a bitch?!" she yelled. " _You_ might not think running out on a date is ungentlemanly, but _I_ sure as hell do! I hope your kid has more staying power than you do! He's sure as hell a better kisser!"

I pushed her away, and held her at arm's length before demanding, "Who are you talking to?"

She smiled a little drunkenly at me. "Your dad's a helluva multi-tasker, I'll give him that. Halfway through doing me and two of my girls and I figure out he's listening in on whatever the hell Robin Freakin' Goodfellow is trying to do to you! Your dad's a goddamned pervert, honey!"

I blinked stupidly at her for a second, before suddenly catching on to what she was telling me.

Patting at my jeans pockets, it didn't take me long to find the tiny piece of electronics my father had obviously left there.

"He _bugged_ me?" I burst out.

Madame Brigitte shook her head. "Any man that wants to listen to his kid having his brains banged out by a guy with a dick the size of the Empire State Building is real sick in the head if you ask me."

I didn't disagree with her.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending how you looked at it, I was pretty sure Kalakos hadn't bugged me to get his jollies listening to me being violated.

If he'd been listening in to me and Goodfellow, then he knew exactly where to find Caliban Leandros.

Caliban Leandros, my younger brother.

I had to get there first.

I _had_ to.

But where the hell was the Ninth Circle?

* * *

That's when I made friends with Sanchez.

Sanchez was a kid I'd spoken to a couple of times throughout the day. I didn't know whether Sanchez was his first name or his last name, but right off I realized there was something kinda hinky about him.

Now my dad—the asshole, remember?—had tried to keep me in the dark about a lot of the work he did. At first I thought maybe he was trying to protect me, but eventually I realized he just didn't want the competition. And, pretty much like the car salesman, he figured I was just a dumb blond who happened to be pretty good with a blade and could kick someone's ass six ways to Sunday without even breaking a sweat.

While most of that was true, the dumb blond part wasn't.

Which is how I knew the kind of clientele who patronized the Ninth Circle were probably not entirely human.

Like the car salesman.

So okay, I knew what a puck was.

And I knew Robin Goodfellow was a puck.

I might not have spent a lot of time with the Vayash, but I would have been an idiot if I'd not figured out there were things going on in the world that the vast majority of the population would pee their collective pants about if they knew existed.

Like creatures who lived for ever and had passed themselves off as gods in the dim distant past.

Or werewolves. Vampires. Weird Russian-sounding slug things that lived in the East River. (I hadn't quite figured out what they were called yet.)

Guys with wings who wanted to kill me.

And those things with the red eyes that had been following me around the last few years.

Yeah, I wasn't an idiot.

So I also knew that when Sanchez told me he used to work as an exotic dancer, he meant "exotic" in a whole other sense than your average stripper.

And I also found out that the guys with wings who wanted to kill me were called Peri.

But they weren't angels.

Sanchez went to very, very extreme lengths to point that out.

Especially when he dragged me into the bathroom to show me his wings.

So as I was running downstairs trying to get to the younger brother I never even knew existed before my father got to him first, I was pretty sure there was one person who could help me.

I found Sanchez in one of the back rooms astride a local councilman who'd already made it into the New York Times due to a particularly unseemly rent boy scandal. Which he denied any part in, of course.

Sanchez's wings were white and gold, and pretty damn impressive.

I'm sure the councilman thought so too.

At first, he seemed a little pissed off at me gatecrashing his own private lap dance, but then he offered me two hundred bucks to make out with Sanchez for him and I figured he didn't mind my being there so much.

Although I could have used the two hundred bucks, I didn't have the time or the inclination to make out with Sanchez, so apologized to the councilman, let him cop a feel of my ass without breaking his arm, and then asked Sanchez for directions.

At first, he denied all knowledge of the Ninth Circle, but turns out he actually knew Caliban Leandros, and although he said he was a bit of asshole, which obviously runs in both sides of my family, he also said he was a good bartender who didn't judge the non-humans, and he didn't really want to see my dad put holes in him.

Ten minutes later, I was in a Peri bar.

Not that you would have known it to look at it.

From the outside, the Ninth Circle looked like any other hangout for the weird, depressed or desperate. Although I knew there was something odd about it, as I'd passed the end of this street several times during my infrequent visits to NYC and had never even noticed the place was here before.

Definitely a hangout for the weird.

When I went inside, it was kind of like that scene from the old westerns, when the stranger walks into the bar and all the music stops.

A couple of guys at a table near the door actually growled at me, while another, who was about the size of your average Mack truck and had teeth that wouldn't have looked out of place on a shark, got up and stood right in my path, pushing a massive hand against my chest without saying a word.

All forward momentum denied me, I glanced around the bar looking for Emilian, but didn't immediately see him anywhere. Which was a definite plus as far as I was concerned.

My relief was kinda curtailed, however, by the tall, good-looking blond guy who came striding over to me, peeled the giant's hand off my chest and got in between us.

I got the impression he was going to be even harder to get around than the giant.

"I think you're in the wrong bar, friend," he said casually, and I heard a distinct flutter from behind him, although I didn't see any wings.

"Supernatural creatures, guys with wings who aren't angels, yada, yada, yada, yeah, I got the memo," I replied impatiently.

The blond raised an eyebrow at me.

And then something the car salesman had said hit me and I smiled, slyly.

"You're Loman's pigeon," I burst out with a grin, and I actually thought the Peri was going to hit me for a second. "Don't worry, I won't tell him you're telling everyone you guys are exclusive."

The Peri seemed to grow about a foot in height, and was positively looming over me when another guy got in between us, pushing the not-angel away from me until he found himself backing up into the giant.

"It's okay, Ish," the newcomer said. "Let me handle the asshole."

"You've got me mixed up with my father," I told the guy. "Happens a lot. I hear we look alike. But he's the asshole."

The newcomer finally turned around to look at me, and that's when I think my brain may have imploded.

He had my eyes.

Exactly the same shade of gray.

He blinked at me for a second, and it was almost like recognition, like he knew who I was without knowing who I was.

I swallowed.

If he was a monster, he wasn't a half bad looking one.

Other than having the same eyes as me, that's where the similarity ended, however.

He was a couple inches shorter than me, jet black hair scraped back into a short tail not entirely dissimilar to my own, although mine was maybe an inch shorter. He had pale, almost translucent skin, and a t-shirt proclaiming, "I'm the king of the world, deal with it" under a totally in-your-face shoulder holster.

"I'm guessing you're Caliban," I said.

He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before a slightly strangled, "It's Cal," came out, followed by the same utterance an octave lower as he tried to stand up a little straighter and regain the composure I'm not sure he ever had.

"Do you two...?" the blond non-angel guy, Ish, started to say, glancing between us.

"And who the hell wants to know?" Caliban demanded, his composure apparently regained with the production of the matte black Desert Eagle he suddenly had pointed in my face.

The kid liked his guns, the puck had said.

I took a breath.

"I don't suppose you'd believe me if I said, 'Come with me if you want to live,' would you?"

The safety clicked off on the Desert Eagle. "That answer your question?"

I raised my hands in what I hoped was a non-threatening manner.

"And who the hell is Loman?" he added, frowning.

The blond guy shook his head at him. "Your mother wasn't real big on schooling, was she?"

The kid straightened, a look of righteous indignation on his pale face. "She said I was too dumb for book learning," he explained. "And to be honest, I never saw the point in school."

That explained a lot.

Emilian had said something similar to me, but that didn't stop me reading every book I could get my hands on when he wasn't around.

"Listen, Caliban—Cal. Can I call you Cal?" I tried again.

My apparent half-brother shrugged, and the muzzle of the Desert Eagle came into direct contact with my forehead. Which wasn't exactly encouraging.

"Okay, here's the deal. You guys ever hear of an asshole called Emilian Kalakos?"

Caliban shrugged again.

"Gypsy fixer," Ish said. "Been in here a couple times. Kind of a psychopath."

I nodded my agreement. "Right? And an asshole, like I said."

"That's your dad?" the Peri asked. "Yeah, I guess you do kinda look like him. And you're right. He's a total asshole."

"I'm not disagreeing with you," I told him. "And I think he might want your boy here dead."

"Most people want to kill Cal once they've met him," Ish observed. "But I don't think your daddy has been in here since Cal started working here."

"Believe me, that's a good thing," I said. I turned my attention back to the Goth wannabe. "You're Vayash, right?" I asked him.

He blinked at me. "How do you...?"

"So is he," I half-explained. "I have a feeling the Vayash have sent him to kill you."

It was at this point my little brother grabbed me by the shoulder, rammed his forearm across my throat and slammed me against the bar.

"If your old man's Vayash, then so are you, right?" he pointed out.

I shrugged noncommittally.

"Then how do I know _you're_ not here to kill me?

I thought about that for a second. "Because I didn't even know you existed until about twenty minutes ago."

"You weren't there?" Leandros demanded. "When your old man offed my boss? I hear it was two blond guys and the older one got shot."

I swallowed. "That may have been me," I admitted. "But at the time I didn't know who you were."

The kid squinted at me. "And who _am_ I?" he demanded.

"Honestly, if you don't know the answer to that, I think you need help."

My brother shoved me harder against the bar, slamming his Desert Eagle into my forehead again for emphasis.

"Who am I to _you_?" he clarified.

I swallowed again. "Maybe we should..." I was going to say, "go somewhere more private," but he rammed the Desert Eagle into my head again so hard I saw stars for a second, and I figured maybe just telling him might stop him from killing me. If only temporarily.

"Your mom was called, Sophia, right?" I said.

He narrowed his eyes. "You seem to know a lot about me."

I shrugged. "Not really, thanks to my dad." I sighed. "Your mom died a couple years ago? In a fire?"

He shifted uncomfortably and the bar owner moved towards us as if he might intervene. Possibly in the interests of my safety.

"Touchy subject," he said. "Cal had a—a life altering experience after his mother died."

Swear to God the kid's eyes turned red for a fraction of a second.

Or maybe I was seeing things.

"I went to Hell for a couple of years," he told me. And I wasn't sure whether that was a euphemism. "Not that it's any of your business, Vayash."

"My name's Niko," I offered, and I'm not sure why. "Kalakos. Niko Kalakos."

"And I would care about that why?" he asked.

"I didn't know because my dad never told me," I began to explain.

"Know what?" The kid was obviously losing his patience.

"My mother was called Sophia," I said, exhaling slowly. "Sophia Leandros."

I still had my hands up and Cal was still drilling his Desert Eagle into my forehead.

He blinked a couple of times but didn't move.

And the gun was still pressed against my head.

The arm across my throat didn't move either, but the hand clutching at my shoulder seemed to tighten in my shirt a little.

I gave him some time.

Because really? I didn't have a whole hell of a lot of choice.

He took a breath, made absolutely no comment about what I'd just told him, and demanded, "Why would the Vayash want to kill me?" instead.

Okay. That was how this was going to go.

"Have you heard of gypsy clans having a burden?" I asked him, deliberately not alluding to what I'd just told him either.

He shook his head minutely. "My mom—" and I swear he emphasized the "my" more than was strictly necessary, "—told me jack shit about those gypsy asshats."

"My dad never told me much either," I agreed, and I thought something shifted in his face just a little. Maybe it was relief. "But after he—" I thought about whether I should reveal too much to the kid, but he was family. He was my _only_ family, if you didn't include Emilian. And I didn't. "After he ditched me a few years ago, I kind of went looking for Sophia and hooked up with the Vayash for a while. They told me every gypsy clan has a burden, something they all have a responsibility to deal with."

Cal's face was complete stone.

"I think you're the Vayash's burden."

He still didn't move. Didn't let on a single emotion he might have been feeling.

"Why would I be their burden?" he asked, tight-lipped, his voice a complete monotone giving nothing away.

I shifted slightly, the muzzle of the Desert Eagle still uncomfortably shoved against my skin. "I don't—there were rumors," I managed, and the Peri looked like he might be thinking about intervening again. I glanced at him nervously, and the look he gave me was a definite warning. He shook his head slightly, but I just shrugged at him. "The gypsies...spit a lot," I said at length. "At me. I didn't really understand why at the time. I was fifteen. My dad had just ditched me. My mom ditched me when I was two years old. I didn't know anything about her. They said...they said she sold herself to monsters."

Again, Caliban didn't react.

 _Caliban_. Shakespeare's monster. Maybe that was why Sophia kept him away from books.

"Are you...? Did she...?"

The Desert Eagle finally dropped away from my head, and Cal pushed me hard before turning away from me and storming off in the opposite direction.

"Wait! I need—we need—"

The Peri put a firm hand against my shoulder. "Maybe you should go," he suggested.

But that wasn't an option.

"I can't let my father kill him," I said. "I don't even know him yet."

Ish shook his head. "Yeah, well maybe you don't want to, kid."

The door opened then, and Goodfellow came striding through looking like he wanted very much to kill someone. Probably me.

"Well here you are, my faithless Achilles," he said through gritted teeth. "I suspected your interest in Caliban Leandros was a little bit more than casual."

He glanced at the Peri's restraining hand on my shoulder, and then in the direction Cal had disappeared.

"I think my father wants to kill him," I explained bluntly.

"Everyone wants to kill him," Goodfellow pointed out, echoing Ish's earlier words. "I should probably kill _you_ for leaving me _in_ _flagrante_ like that," he added, and the Peri frowned at him. He shrugged. "Ishiah, sometimes a puck just needs something cheap and meaningless," he explained. "Although Madame Brigitte charged me a small fortune for this one."

Ishiah glanced at me. "You're a prostitute?" He at least sounded mildly surprised.

"Only in my dad's head," I commented, before adding, "I was undercover."

"Trying to—er—pump me for information on young Caliban," Goodfellow explained with a mischievous grin.

"And I'm not cheap," I added. "Or meaningless."

I'd been meaningless my whole life and I was tired of it.

I didn't want to be my psycho father's sidekick or his hired gun.

I didn't want to be an assassin.

I wanted to be someone's big brother.

Goodfellow tipped his head to the side. "So I suppose you figured it out?" he asked, his voice having softened somewhat.

I squinted at him. "Figured _what_ out?" I asked.

The puck shook his head. "You really are the living embodiment of every fantasy I ever had," he murmured. "I mean, you know, Cal's a good-looking kid, but he's not exactly my cup of tea. Too…brunette. I always thought he had beautiful eyes, though."

He looked me up and down in a way that made me _very_ uncomfortable.

"But _you_ …" he continued. "You're the deluxe upgrade. Those beautiful gray eyes in hot blond packaging. And kind of dumb into the bargain."

Ishiah cleared his throat pointedly, and Goodfellow glanced sideways at him.

"Although he'll never be as beautiful as you, my angel," he amended.

"Not an angel," the Peri pointed out.

Goodfellow turned his brightest smile on him. "You are to me, my love," he said, and I'm not sure how I avoided vomiting.

"So what did I figure out?" I asked, trying to get the puck back on track while letting his insult regarding my mental capacity slide.

Sometimes it paid to let people think you were just a dumb blond.

He blinked at me. "That he's your brother."

"And how did _you_ know that?" I asked.

"I already told you: Your eyes. I knew Sophia Leandros—" he shuddered, "—briefly. As soon as I saw you, I knew who you were."

I wasn't entirely convinced the puck was telling me everything.

There was a lot of that going around.

"Look," I said, feeling just a little bit exasperated. "My dad had me bugged. He heard you telling me where Cal works. To be honest, I'm surprised he's not here already. I need to get him _out_ of here."

"What if _he_ doesn't want to go?" a voice asked from behind me.

I turned to see Caliban standing there, the Desert Eagle in his hand, but, thankfully, no longer pointed in my direction.

"He's going to kill you," I repeated.

"Bring it on!" he exclaimed. "I can handle as many assassins as those gypsy fuckers want to send my way."

"Look," I said, turning to face him. "I just found out I have a brother—"

"I'm not your brother."

We stood looking at each other for a second.

"Brothers have each other's backs," he continued, his tone just a little bit the wrong side of accusatory. "Where the fuck were _you_ when Sophia was beating the shit out of me?" He took a step toward me, waving the Desert Eagle threateningly in my direction. "Where were _you_ when she let her 'friends' touch me up for the price of a bottle of Jack?" He took another step closer, and I swear I saw fire in his eyes again. "Where were _you_ when she let the fucking _monsters_ take me?" He was right in my face now, one hand fisting in the front of my shirt. "Where were _you_ when I came back so fucking messed up I didn't even know my own name and Sophia was a pile of ash in a burnt-out trailer? Huh?" He shook me a little, as if to emphasize the point. " _Huh_? Where _were_ you?"

"I was getting the shit beaten out of me by my father," I told him, pushing him right on back. "I was getting touched up by perverts because my dad wanted their intel. I was giving blowjobs in bus station bathrooms because I had no other way to survive. I was getting spit on by my clan because of something my mother did that I didn't even know about. I was working three jobs at fifteen because my only family ditched me. I was getting half-murdered by assholes with wings and followed around by red-eyed monsters, and then I was killing people because I didn't know what else to do. So don't tell me you cornered the market on fucked up childhoods and dysfunctional relationships with asshole parents because you're not the only one with a fucking sob story, Caliban."

I took a breath and so did he.

We were standing so close to each other I could see my eyes reflected in his.

"It's Cal," he said at length.

"Hi Cal, I'm Niko," I said. "You wanna try this again?"

We stood staring at each other for a second, before Goodfellow suddenly piped up, "Wow, did anyone else find that _really_ hot?"

I glanced over my shoulder at him and muttered, "Pervert," at the exact same second my brother did the same.

We met each other's accusatory gaze once again, and it was almost like a dare.

Neither of us moved.

"If you had to choose," Cal finally started to ask slowly, "between me and him—" and by "him" I presumed he meant Kalakos. "Who would you choose?"

I didn't even have to think about it. "I'm standing here, aren't I? You wanted to know where I was? Well here I am."

"Better late than never."

"Look, I'm sorry he never came for you. My dad. But he didn't come for me, either. I was just dumped on him. So there would have been no chance..."

"...He'd want another monster's kid..."

"…When he didn't even want his own."

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a sly grin flitter across Goodfellow's face. "Finishing each other's sentences," he said, ostensibly to Ish, but loud enough that Cal and I could hear. "Meant to be together."

"I think I might vomit."

The familiar voice came from behind me, and I turned, just as Emilian vaulted over the bar, his Glock trained on my brother's head throughout the motion.

As if it was reflex, something I'd done a million times before, I found myself darting in between them, one hand raised toward my father in supplication.

"Wait!" I said, grabbing hold of Cal's t-shirt and pulling him behind me. "Don't!"

My father took a step towards us, his Glock now aimed at my head instead of my brother's.

"Get out of the way, Niko," he said coldly, his voice a completely emotionless monotone. "I don't want to have to blast a hole in your pretty face to put a hole in the monster you're protecting, but I will."

I swallowed.

"He's my brother," was all I said.

"He's a _monster_!" Kalakos returned, another step toward us, and then suddenly the little brother I'd stepped in front of a gun to protect had an arm around my throat and was yanking me backward, his Desert Eagle this time pressed to the back of my head.

"Come any closer and I'll blow your little boy's brains out!" he spat, and oh what a great position _this_ was to be in.

A knowing smile leeched across my father's face, and he raised one eyebrow sardonically. "You see, Niko?" he said. "You see why I never told you about him? I knew you'd go looking for him. And I knew he'd get you killed."

"Like you care," I returned. "You could care less about me. You didn't come find me because you felt bad about ditching me; you came back because you hoped I'd lead you to _him_!"

Kalakos nodded, and he wasn't even embarrassed about it. "You're the son of a slut and a whore," he said evenly. "You're not my son. You've never _been_ my son. You're a means to an end. That's all you've ever been. Do you know what my 'liaison' with your mother cost me? _Everything_! In the eyes of the clan, when she whored herself out to—" he waved his gun distastefully in Cal's direction, "— _this_ one's aberration of a father, I was just as tainted as she was. Just as tainted as _you_. Just as tainted as _him_. But there's a way back for me. A way I can redeem myself in the eyes of my people."

"By killing my brother."

"The Vayash burden. I've been searching for him for three years now."

"Since you showed up in the bar where I worked to tell me my mother was dead? That wasn't a coincidence, was it? You came looking for me."

"The Vayash had little concern about him till he disappeared and returned a day later two years older."

I glanced behind me at Cal, who shrugged.

"He came back so feral he murdered your mother without even realizing he'd done it!"

"That's not true," Cal said from behind me, and his voice was both fire and ice. "That's not true," he repeated, his voice lowered, and I knew it was only meant for me. " _They_ killed her," he said a little more loudly. "The Auphe."

"The...?"

" _His_ kind," my father spat by way of explanation. "The things with red eyes that have been following you around the last couple of years."

I swallowed. "Why were they following me?"

"The same reason _I_ was following you!" Kalakos burst out. "The same reason the Peri were following you! Hoping you'd lead us to _him_!"

"I didn't even know he existed!" I protested.

"And yet here we are!" Kalakos held his arms wide, before returning the Glock to point at my face. "You led me to him all the same."

"Meant to be together," Goodfellow murmured, and I kind of wished he'd stop saying things like that.

I glanced over at Ish, who was busy examining his feet. "Why do the Peri want me dead?" I asked. "The guy with the wings who tried to kill me said I had to die to save the world."

Ish glanced sidelong at Goodfellow. "On this point we disagree," he said. "We believe you will help your brother end the world." He inclined his head in the car salesman's direction. "He believes you'll help him save it."

"You're not exactly Mata Hari, my lovely," Goodfellow said, raising an eyebrow. "Although you're almost as pretty. Any intel you got out of me, you got because I wanted you to."

I frowned at him. "You _did_ want me to find him!"

"You're supposed to be what keeps him human," Goodfellow said, his expression completely serious. "In every life—in every world... You're supposed to be _together_. But something has gone wrong this time. This isn't—the two of you aren't the way you're supposed to be."

I felt Cal shift behind me, his arm around my throat tightening. "And how are we _supposed_ to be?" he asked.

Goodfellow shrugged. "He keeps you human, you keep him focused," he replied cryptically. "It's the way it's supposed to be. It's the way it's _always_ been. Until now. Something has gone drastically wrong."

I didn't know what the puck was talking about, and I didn't think Cal or Kalakos did either.

"This is all very fascinating," Emilian said, taking another step towards us, "but I have a burden to discharge. Now for the last time, Niko, get out of the way. I don't particularly want to kill you, but I will."

"In case you haven't noticed," I told him, the exasperation obvious in my voice, "I'm the hostage here! There's not a whole lot I can do about it unless one of you decides to stop pointing a gun at me!"

Cal's response to that was to shove his Desert Eagle harder into the back of my head, while Kalakos, who was now as close to me as Cal, pressed his Glock against my forehead.

"Okay, this is kind of unfair," I pointed out.

Emilian curled a lip. "You die when he dies. It's poetic."

"Or he dies when _you_ die," Cal insisted. "Just as poetic."

"Either way I end up kinda dead," I said. "I think this is what they call a lose-lose situation."

"You don't have the stones to kill him," and Emilian wasn't even talking to me now. It was as if I wasn't even there.

"Yeah, well no matter how much of a shitty father you are," Cal returned, "you're not gonna kill your own kid."

Emilian shrugged. "Well no matter you two have only known each other five minutes, you're not going to kill your own brother."

Cal shoved his gun even harder against my head. "Try me! He means even less to me than he means to you!"

"So shoot him then! Shoot him to get to me! Do it! Do it!"

"Wait!" I distantly heard Goodfellow yell. "This isn't how it's supposed to _be_!"

I heard two safeties click off simultaneously, finally realized that neither my father nor my brother gave a shit about me, and in that moment of revelation realized one other thing: my entire family was going to die here today.

Kalakos took a step back, grit his teeth and fired.

I'm not entirely sure what happened after that.

There was a light in front of me, between me and my father, but it wasn't a light, it was an _absence_ of light, a dark swirling bruise growing outwards across the reality in front of my eyes until it was all I could see, everything around me, just a darkness of light, a bullet an inch from my forehead, my brother's arm around my neck and his voice in my ear.

"Hold tight, big brother. This is gonna make you puke."

* * *

And I _did_ puke.

Boy, did I puke.

It was kind of like having your guts ripped out through your ass and shoved back down your throat while someone tore your arms off and beat you around the head with them.

When I finally finished puking up everything left in my body that I could possibly puke, I laid my forehead against unusually cool concrete, closed my eyes and pretty much wished Kalakos' bullet had found its way into my brain.

"What...what...what was..."

Yeah, I wasn't exactly at my most sparklingly coherent best.

"I call it a gate."

I could see Cal's boots in front of me, and he was tapping one foot impatiently.

"A gate to where?" I tried to look up at him, but my body was steadfastly refusing to cooperate with any of my instructions.

"Hell if I know," he said. "Darkling calls it a rip in reality. But he's a melodramatic bedwetter."

I blinked, tried to breathe through my mouth, couldn't stop shaking.

Cal's hand was on my shoulder and I somehow found the strength enough to raise my eyes and look at him as he crouched in front of me.

"Quite a trip, right?" he continued, and he was grinning at me proudly. "I can go to any place I've been before in a fraction of a second." He laughed then. "Faster than a speeding bullet."

"My dad—"

"Tried to shoot you, yeah. I noticed that. You're right. He's a total asshole."

"But you..."

"Saved your ass? Yeah, I did. Told you. Faster than bullets."

"But why? Why did you save me?"

He considered that for a second. "If he'd shot you," he said, "the bullet would have gone through your face and into my brain. It was self-defense." I blinked stupidly at him, and he grabbed me by the front of my shirt none-too-gently, before adding, "And you're my big brother. Never had one of those before. Wanted to try it out for longer than five minutes."

I blinked at him again, barely had the strength to keep my head up, could vaguely make out dark shapes gathering behind him.

Dark shapes with red eyes.

My fingers tightened convulsively around Cal's wrist, and his grin widened.

"Don't worry," he assured me, and I swear his eyes sparked scarlet again. "They're with me."

I'd only seen glimpses before.

Stolen glances at dark shapes above the rooftops, under cars, in trees.

Red eyes.

Always red eyes.

The metal teeth and claws were new to me though.

They were crowding in around him, moving closer, sniffing the air as if deciding how tasty a treat I would be for them to tear into tiny pieces with their metal teeth.

Cal glanced over his shoulder at them and they stopped. Instantly.

"No one touches this one," he said, pointing at me. "Or they'll answer to me."

There was a general grumbling amongst the approaching mass of nightmares, but after a couple of seconds of growling, they began to retreat away from us again, like a particularly horrific tide of homicidal jetsam.

Cal's grin returned and he held out a hand to me, which I took, my own still shaking.

He pulled me to my feet, and somehow my legs managed to bear my weight without too much complaint.

"Where…?" I began to ask, glancing around us.

We were in some kind of warehouse, boxes and packing crates piled up in random stacks all over the concrete floor with white-haired visions of horror crouching atop them like gargoyles protecting their loot.

"Brooklyn," Cal answered, as if it was a normal, everyday occurrence to be in Manhattan one second and Brooklyn the next. "We're in Brooklyn."

"Why?" I asked.

Cal's grin widened. "The Auphe hired me to do a job for them," he replied cryptically.

"Hired you?"

"Kind of," he amended, shifting from one foot to the other. "Actually, they hired an asshat called Darkling to possess me and force me to do their bidding, but after he taught me how to make gates, I figured I only needed him for the main event, so I quit letting him think he was in control and shoved him to the back of my brain until I needed to use him. I thought about tossing him out on his ass and gating him to Tumulus, but then I'd have to go back there to get him eventually, and no way I'm going back there."

I blinked at him. "Tumulus?"

"Auphe Hell," he replied. "The place they took me when I was fourteen. When I came back, dear old Mommy was a pile of ash and I'd aged two years in a day. I was kind of wild and crazy after that for a while—couldn't even remember how to speak English—until Darkling showed up and took the wheel. He helped me remember who I was and who I could be. Who I'm _supposed_ to be."

I took a breath, scarcely daring to ask. "Who are you supposed to be?"

He gazed at me for a second, his gray eyes gradually bleaching out to red even as I watched.

"The Unmaker of the World," he said.

And I was too scared to ask him what that meant.

* * *

It was something to do with a sound system and some guy whose niece Cal had a crush on. I didn't quite follow the specifics. This guy—Samuel—was bringing Cal some heavy-duty speakers which he was going to use to "Unmake the World."

"So this is why they paid Sophia to...to..."

"Fuck one of them?" Cal supplied. We were sitting on one of the crates, our shoulders touching while our legs swung over the edge. Cal said the ground was making him crazy and he needed to not be touching it for a while.

I didn't know what that meant, either.

I shrugged at him and he grinned as if none of it bothered him.

"I was the culmination of a breeding program years in the making," he told me, and he almost sounded proud of it. "The Auphe can open gates, but not to where they need to go. It takes too much energy, which they can't channel. So they hired Darkling—a male banshee—who could channel the energy they needed, but he couldn't open a gate. And it turned out he couldn't possess an Auphe. So they came up with a compromise. Darkling _could_ possess a human, but a human couldn't open a gate..."

"So they needed a human who could open a gate?"

Cal's grin widened. "Or a half human, half Auphe."

"Which is what you are?"

"That's what it says on the label."

"So the Vayash hate you and Sophia and Emilian and—" I paused and swallowed, "—me because..."

"I'm half Vayash, half monster."

I nodded slowly. "You don't look like a monster."

Cal shrugged. "Sophia always used to call me a 'beautiful monster,'" he said, and if he felt any bitterness he didn't show it. "Good genes, I guess. The human half, anyway."

"So this Darkling…" I began.

"Started stalking me. Hiding out in mirrors. Caught up with me when I was half out of my mind after Tumulus, jumped me and took control of me." Cal shrugged. "Don't know why he didn't just ask, it's not like I would have said 'no.'" He frowned. "I'm not even sure I knew what 'no' meant back then."

I nodded again, not sure I was entirely following any of this. "And he channels energy from...where?"

"We're over ley lines at the scene of some historic massacre or other. He uses the power of the slaughtered."

"That's—" I began, "—nice?" I offered. "And then he channels the energy so that you can open a big ass gate to...where exactly?"

Cal winked at me. "You want me to blow the ending?"

Honestly? I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to know what the Auphe had bred him to do at all.

"I guess you can surprise me," I told him.

"Oh, it'll definitely be a surprise, Cyrano."

I squinted at him. "'Cyrano?'" I echoed.

If it was possible for him to grin even bigger, he did. He was clearly enjoying being a little brother. "You kind of have a hooter on you there, bro," he said.

"My dad says we have a classic Roman profile," I told him. "Although he's kinda full of bullshit."

"Yeah, I'd chalk that one up to bullshit alright," Cal agreed.

A guy I took to be Samuel appeared just then, a couple of huge speakers trailing behind him on a dolly.

"I brought the equipment," he said, his voice flat and emotionless, as if he really did not want to be there.

"You're a good puppy, Sammy," Cal said. "Keep this up and you'll get a nice treat."

Samuel scowled humorlessly at him. "Where do you want it?" he asked, and my brother sighed, as if none of this was particularly entertaining enough for him.

"In front of the far wall, about twenty feet back," he instructed, pointing at an area not covered with crates. "Keep them to the side and leave a path. And jack the amps all the way up. I'm going to make some serious noise."

Samuel turned on his heel without another word and began to busy himself setting up the speakers as instructed.

"So…" I began. "Why the speakers?"

Cal turned the same sunny grin on me that he'd used so ineffectually on Samuel.

"Why so impatient, big brother?" he asked, and it still sounded weird. He seemed to have adapted to suddenly having a brother a lot faster than I had.

He jumped down off the packing crate and took a step toward Samuel, as if to supervise what the guy was doing.

"Where do you want the microphone stand?" Samuel asked without even turning to look at him.

Cal seemed to consider that for a second. "No stand," he answered. "I saw your singer use a headset. That's what I want. Another thing, Samuel," he added. "I'd like you to stick around and see the show. Admission is free."

Samuel looked at him, his eyes completely devoid of emotion, and for the first time I began to wonder what had happened to this guy. What had been done to him. What had _Cal_ done to him. "All right. I'll be back with the headset," was all he said, and he turned away, picking his way through the gathering hoard of Auphe and out of sight.

"Are they not allowed to touch him either?" I asked as casually as I was able, because honestly? Suddenly finding out you had a younger brother who could boss around homicidal monsters like they were kindergarten students was a little bit unsettling.

Cal grinned again, and it wasn't so much a smile as a grimace that twisted his good-looking human face into something…not.

And his eyes were still red.

"It is time."

Startled by the inhuman voice virtually in my ear, I spun around to the unnerving sight of a seething hoard of amassed Auphe packing the warehouse behind us like nightmarish, metal-toothed sardines.

First it was just one voice chanting the words, "It is time," then two, then five, then twenty until finally it was all of them, one voice raised to the rafters until the words forgot their meaning and were gradually replaced by a moaning that set my teeth on edge and had me looking desperately for an exit.

But my brother was gripping my wrist.

And they were all looking at him.

I could feel myself trembling as hundreds of blood red eyes gazed longingly at Cal, his eyes a reflection of theirs and no longer a reflection of my own.

I'm sure Sophia would have been proud.

Cal certainly seemed to be.

His grin had widened still further, and he spread his arms as his head fell back and his eyes closed.

"Suffer the little children to come unto me," he said, and when he opened his eyes again they were no longer red.

They were silver.

"Jesus. Sweet Jesus."

Samuel was standing at my shoulder, his face pallid and sweaty, and if I thought I was trembling, he was positively vibrating.

"Oh, my sights are set higher than that," my brother said.

But I got the impression this was no longer my brother.

He spared me one short glance and winked at me, his eyes flickering between silver and red.

"Don't worry, big brother," he said. "Darkling knows how to share. If he tries to take control, he's more than aware there's a nice big hole waiting for him on Tumulus."

"What are you going to do?" I asked, and Cal just smiled at me, reaching out to take the headset from Samuel's shaking hand.

"I think it's a little too late to be worrying about that now," he said, slipping on the headset as Samuel slowly began to back away from us. "You might as well stick around, Samuel," he continued. "There's nowhere you can go to hide from this. Nowhere in the world."

Samuel continued to back away, and Cal let him go, although he was still hanging on to my wrist so hard I began to think he might be intent on breaking it.

"Not you," he barked, as I made a move to disengage myself from his clawing fingers. "You need to stay with me."

He turned suddenly, yanking me with him, his back to the Auphe and his hands held out in front of him, the one not clenching my wrist balled into a fist.

He faced the empty wall in front of us as if there was something there only he could see, and as the concrete beneath our feet started to glow dully, his entire body went rigid and I could hear the energy crackling through his hair, his clothes, his fingertips. Through me.

I clenched my teeth and screwed my eyes shut and suddenly there was a tugging at my wrist, and when I dared open my eyes again, Cal was _floating_ up into the air, pulling me with him until I was on tiptoes, while the ground beneath me seemed, in turn, to be pulling me back down, and I honestly felt like I was going to be ripped in half.

Cal didn't let go, but his grip on me curtailed his ascent and he hung in midair for several long seconds, completely unmoving.

And then he began to sing.

It was one long, torturous note, a wail or a scream of something unholy that seemed to emanate not so much from him as from whatever it was beneath our feet; whatever it was that was making the concrete glow.

And then reality blinked in front of him.

Blinked and began to fold in on itself, as it had in the bar when Cal had grabbed me seconds before Emilian's bullet had ripped into my face.

The whole wall in front of us had become a swirling mass of something—nothing—something. It was at least eighteen feet high and almost as wide, and as the nothing began to clear once again into something, I realized I could see sky. Night sky. And stars. Where seconds earlier there had been only wall.

And the smell.

Like rotten eggs mixed with something else, something burning. And animals. Trees. Earth.

"Home," the Auphe murmured as one behind me.

Cal dropped back to the floor then, his fingers still wrapped painfully about my wrist, but he was shaking, and it was almost as if he needed to hang on to me to keep himself upright.

"No time like the present, boss," he said through clenched teeth, and there were beads of sweat on his forehead, as if keeping the gate open was taking a greater toll on him than he'd expected. "This baby isn't going to stay open much longer."

"What are you—where did you…?" I couldn't even frame the question properly, but Cal turned his head ever-so-slightly in my direction, blinking his eyes from silver to red.

"Dawn of time," he grit out. "Dawn of humanity."

I blinked back at him. "You built a gate back in time?" I asked a little incredulously.

I glanced over my shoulder at the amassed Auphe as they gazed, hypnotized, at the gate in front of them, slowly edging closer to it as if they were one huge, hideous creature with only a single purpose in mind.

"Home," they murmured again, and suddenly I understood.

And it was terrible.

"They're going to stop humanity from ever starting," I said quietly. "They're ending the human race before it begins?"

Cal nodded slightly at me. "Take back what's rightfully theirs," he said. "What the human infestation stole from them."

He sounded like he was quoting an Auphe propaganda pamphlet, and I wondered how much of this was him and how much had been indoctrinated into him by this Darkling creature.

"But you're—you're half human…" I began to argue.

"And soon I'll be all that's left," he agreed. " _We'll_ be all that's left," he amended.

And that was when I realized why he wouldn't let go of my wrist.

I opened my mouth to remonstrate with him, argue, tell him what he was doing was wrong.

But no words came out.

Nothing.

I'd gone looking to save my brother, but instead he was offering to save me.

And that's when the left speaker was suddenly split open from top to bottom by a shining silver blade.

My father's blade.

From the _inside_.

The Auphe behind me hissed as one, and Cal positively growled as Emilian Kalakos and Robin Goodfellow burst out of the suspiciously large speaker.

"Georgina," I heard Cal mutter. "What have you and Uncle Sammy been up to?"

Despite his taunting speech, his complexion was becoming more and more pallid by the second, while his hands continued to tremble, and I was pretty certain his gate wasn't going to stay open a whole lot longer.

I wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Cal seemed to think it was the latter.

"Well, well," he ground out. "If it isn't the evil stepfather and his little goat. You're a little late to the party, boys."

Goodfellow was gazing up at the gate in abject horror. "No," he murmured. "It cannot… _ektos mas_. Kalakos, it is the past. It's a time before humans. If the Auphe go through there…"

"Close it," my father ordered, moving between my brother and the gate. He pointed his blade at my brother's throat, while in his other hand his Glock was pointed at Cal's head.

Cal didn't move.

Even when Goodfellow and Samuel suddenly produced sawed-off shotguns from beneath their coats and began to fire randomly into the crowd of rapidly advancing Auphe.

"Ah, shit," Cal cursed, his eyes once again silver.

Not Cal. Darkling.

His focus was all on the gate, which was beginning to shudder and blink, shrinking slightly as the Auphe around us tried to reach it even as they were blasted backwards by shotgun fire.

"Close the gate, Caliban," Kalakos demanded. "Close it or I'll open you."

"You're talking to the wrong person," Darkling snarled. "Caliban can't get to the phone right now. Please leave a message."

My father looked at me for the first time, noting Cal's grip on my wrist with one dispassionate glance.

"It's called Darkling," I told him, although I don't know why I felt the need to explain anything to that bastard. "It's possessing him."

"That's _his_ excuse," Kalakos snapped. "What's yours?"

I swallowed.

"Niko," I heard Goodfellow approaching me, even as he and Samuel discarded the shotguns in favor of automatic weapons and continued their barrage against the Auphe, who were in no way retreating. "You have to stop this! This isn't how it's supposed to _be_!"

I blinked at him, and I noticed Cal briefly turn his attention in the puck's direction, his eyes blinking to red, and even more briefly, to gray, before returning to silver.

"How—what do you mean?" I asked.

Goodfellow shrugged desperately at me. "Niko, I've known you and your brother for a very long time. A lifetime. _Many_ lifetimes—" And once again I realized I had no idea what was going on. "You're not like this. _Neither_ of you are like this. You're supposed to _save_ the world, not destroy it!"

I remembered the words of the Peri who had tried to kill me. How I needed to die to save the world.

When I found myself unable to come up with a suitable reply, my little brother spoke for me.

"You know nothing about us, puck," he said. "How do _you_ know what we're supposed to do?"

Goodfellow dropped his weapon momentarily. "Because I _know_ you!" he repeated. "I've known you through many lifetimes. Sometimes you're brothers. Sometimes you're cousins. Sometimes you're just best friends. But you're always, _always_ together and always, _always_ heroes!"

"How do you know we're not heroes?" Cal asked. "How do you know this isn't what's _supposed_ to happen? How do you know this isn't what we're _supposed_ to do?"

"You're not supposed to destroy humanity!" Goodfellow remonstrated. "You're supposed to _save_ it!"

Cal's eyes were red again. "I'm the Unmaker of the World," he repeated. "Doesn't sound like I'm supposed to save anything to me."

Goodfellow inclined his head in my direction. "That's what _he's_ for!" he burst out. "He's supposed to save _you_ so that _you_ save the world!"

"I—I barely know him…" I began to protest.

"That's exactly the _problem_!" the puck pointed out in exasperation. "You're _supposed_ to know each other! You're _supposed_ to grow up _together_! Always, _always_ you're together!"

"Until now." I thought I was catching his drift. "Something changed this time."

Goodfellow nodded, and he seemed a little relieved that I understood what he was trying to tell us. "Something's gone wrong. You shouldn't have been separated as children. It wasn't supposed to _be_ like this! Niko, you're always the stabilizing influence on your brother. You make him human. He makes you whole. Now, without you, he's not—"

"As human as I ought to be?" Cal supplied, and his eyes were once again red.

Goodfellow swallowed visibly. "You don't have to Unmake the world," he said.

Cal considered that.

"No," he said. "I don't. But this time I get to choose."

I don't know where it came from, maybe his waistband, but just for a second he let go of his death grip on my wrist and produced the Desert Eagle.

And shot Goodfellow between the eyes with it.

The puck went down immediately, and I heard Samuel gasp.

And time seemed to stand still.

Just for one eternally long second.

Everyone's attention was on the fallen puck, on the green eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling and the tiny trickle of blood running down his forehead from the hole Cal had put there.

"No," I heard Samuel murmur, then yell, "NO!"

And then he was charging at the Auphe, his weapon raining bullets into them, but there were so many of them and he was just one man.

They soon overran him, pouring over him as they made their way to the gate, and he went down in a spray of blood and tissue as metal teeth ripped into his neck and his chest, leaving what was left of him to be trampled like garbage under hundreds of monstrous feet.

My father took a deep breath, his sword still at my brother's throat. "Shut it down," he repeated. "I won't tell you again."

"You wasted my time telling me at all," Cal told him. He kicked out at him, but missed when Emilian took a step backwards, and then he spat something at him and I was reminded of all the times the Vayash had spat at me.

Kalakos swore, and I could immediately see his jaw and chin begin to redden and swell.

Cal's eyes were silver again, and I figured this was some kind of defense mechanism of Darkling's. Maybe poison? Venom of some kind?

My father went briefly to one knee, and it was at that point the Auphe charging toward the gate began to howl in frustrated anger.

The gate was closing.

Cal turned his attention back to the gate, his Desert Eagle falling from his hand and clattering to the ground between us as he tried to regain control over his failing portal.

My father wasted no time.

He rose instantly to his feet, his sword aimed directly at my brother's abdomen, and suddenly I was skidding across the concrete towards Cal's gun, snatching it up and pointing it at my father without really considering what I was doing.

He paused for a second, turning dark eyes in my direction for just an instant, as if I wasn't really worth his time. "You don't have the balls," he told me dismissively. "You're meaningless."

And then he began to pull back the sword, aiming to plunge it into my brother.

I'm not sure how many times I shot him.

I kept firing until the Desert Eagle clicked onto empty, until my father was still and lifeless on the ground at my feet, his blood pouring red onto the rapidly cooling concrete.

I didn't move for a long time.

Not until I felt Cal's fingers once again gripping my wrist.

"We need to go, Cyrano," he told me.

I paused, unsure what I was supposed to do.

I'd just killed my father to save my brother.

But might have destroyed the world in the process.

Cal pulled insistently at my wrist.

"Where are we going?" I asked uncertainly. I glanced at the dwindling gate, at the last of the Auphe pouring through into a world that didn't have any clue about the terrible nightmare about to be unleashed upon it. "Through there?"

Cal shook his head, and his eyes had returned to their usual gray. "No," he said. "That wasn't the deal. But we need to go." He grimaced slightly. "Just need to drop off the passenger first."

His eyes began to flicker wildly between gray and silver as he clenched his jaw, his grip on me becoming so intense I could feel my bones grinding together painfully.

"Cal—"

And then he threw back his head as he had when the gate opened, and screamed, "OUT!" so loudly that it reverberated out of the one remaining working speaker and echoed through the now empty room, quiet as the grave as the last of the Auphe crossed over the threshold into the past and the gate closed with a resounding pop.

A dark cloud of _something_ shot out of Cal's eyes, and was gone in an instant, and I frowned at him as his grip on my wrist began to lessen to something a little more tolerable.

"Bye, bye, Darkling," he murmured, his eyes once again the same color as my own. "It's been a blast."

That was when the ground beneath us began to shake.

"We need to _go_!" Cal repeated insistently.

"Why? What's going to happen?" I demanded. "Cal! I just killed my father for you! Where are we—?"

"We have to get away from here. Someplace safer," he didn't explain.

And that was when the walls around us began to shimmer and shake, and at first I thought the warehouse was going to collapse but instead it just…began to disappear.

One second I was standing in a building on an ordinary street in Brooklyn, the next I was standing in a field.

And Brooklyn was nowhere to be seen.

I could still see the East River in the distance, but Brooklyn Bridge was just _gone_.

And so was most of Manhattan.

"What just…?"

"Unmade," Cal explained shortly, keeping a firm grip on my wrist. "Hold tight," he said. "Or you disappear too."

He was trembling again, clearly exhausted from keeping the giant gate open long enough for the Auphe to escape through.

Ripping off the headset, he pulled me closer to him, hanging on to me for dear life as another swirling maelstrom of destruction appeared in the air in front of us.

"Am I going to puke again?" I asked him.

He inclined his head slightly. "I'm thinking yes?"

It was over in a second, the gate building itself around us this time, and when I dared open my eyes again, we were standing on a hill looking out over a view that should have been familiar but wasn't any longer.

I could see the remnants of buildings that I'd seen many times, brickwork and metal not so much collapsing as disappearing, brick by brick, girder by girder. The Chrysler Building, Macy's, the Flat Iron; buildings I'd seen from this vantage point when I'd stood here with my father many years ago, the first time he brought me to New York City when I was ten years old.

We were standing where the Empire State Building was supposed to be.

There was no Statue of Liberty. No Manhattan Bridge. Brooklyn was now green fields and trees in the far distance.

Beneath us, Manhattan was disappearing, building upon building unmaking itself, like a time lapse film in reverse. The cars and the people just winked out of existence as we stood watching them, and I became even more aware of Cal's fingers around my wrist, and his gate still surrounding us, as if we were standing in a bubble of our reality protecting us from the reality which was rebuilding itself inexorably around us.

I didn't puke because of the gate this time.

I puked because of what I'd just done, what I'd helped my brother do.

He'd Unmade the World; but I'd helped him do it.

"You might not be perfect, but you're not meaningless anymore," he said quietly. "Neither of us are. We're the last humans left on the planet. The last there will ever be."

I took a deep breath, trying to collect myself. I wanted to pull away from him, from the horror of him, the horror of what he'd done.

The horror of what _I'd_ done.

I'd saved him so he could end the world.

But I wasn't sure what would happen to me if he let me go.

I thought maybe I would disappear too, Unmade, like the rest of our reality.

I didn't want to be alone anymore.

I didn't want to be meaningless anymore.

I wanted to be a brother.

I wanted to survive.

But in what world? What world was there left for us to survive in?

"They agreed to leave me alone," Cal said, as if he'd read my thoughts. "They said if I built a gate around myself in the present, reality would reset itself around me and I would survive." He closed his eyes briefly, before turning them out towards Manhattan. There were fires now. Fires everywhere. And inhuman cries of an Auphe population overrunning the world. "But for me, it's not about survival; it's about ending it. Ending all of it."

I glanced at him quizzically. "Ending all of what?" I asked.

"I don't remember it all," Cal explained, still gazing out towards the horizon. "But I do remember some of it. I remember a hundred painful deaths."

For a second, I didn't understand what he meant, but then it slowly began to dawn on me. Goodfellow. Goodfellow had been talking about having known us through many lifetimes.

"You…you remember some of that?" I asked. "The past lives Goodfellow was talking about?"

Cal shrugged. "Only pieces of it. I thought the memories were dreams at first; nightmares. It took me a long time to realize what they really were, actual memories of lives I'd lived before. And this was the first time Robin confirmed the truth of it." He was looking at me now, as if what was happening to our world no longer mattered to him. "When you were Achilles and I was Patroclus, you said we would never see old age. You were right. We never did. Not once. We never died peacefully in our sleep as old men. Never."

I blinked at him. "I—I was Achilles?"

A strange smile crinkled the corner of his mouth, and he nodded slightly.

"Not so meaningless after all, Dad," I murmured, just a little bit triumphantly. Then I tuned back into what Cal had been saying. "But why choose this? How does this end it all?"

Cal smiled softly at me, as if it ought to be obvious. "No more humans," he explained, "means no more reincarnation."

"We could be reincarnated as Auphe," I pointed out.

Cal shook his head. "I don't believe they have souls," he countered. "We won't come back as Auphe."

At least that meant we actually _had_ souls, Cal and I.

I thought about that for a while, as I continued to gaze at the horizon, darkened by smoke, Unmade and Remade into an image of a world I didn't recognize.

I had killed my father to save my brother and destroyed the world in the process.

I was the last human left standing on the Earth.

But I was still standing.

And so was my brother.

And we were finally together, as we were always meant to be.

For Cal, it may have been about ending it all.

But for me, it was all about survival.

Mine and my brother's.

The world could go to Hell.

 **The End**


End file.
